Plane makes ‘wheels-up’ emergency landing at Newcastle airport after circling for hours

A small plane has performed a successful emergency landing without its landing gear at Newcastle airport in New South Wales.

The plane had been circling above Newcastle for almost four hours with three people onboard, including the pilot, after discovering the mechanical issue almost immediately after departing the city’s airport for a planned flight to Port Macquarie on Monday morning.

Authorities had been bracing for a fiery emergency, with more than a dozen crews including fire trucks, police, the State Emergency Service and ambulances at Newcastle airport. An operations room had been set up at a nearby defence base at Williamtown.

Onlookers gathered at the airport with the crowd erupting in cheers as the plane landed on its belly without significant damage at about 12.20pm. The pilot and passengers walked away from the plane afterwards.

The flight was the most-watched service on major flight tracking websites on Monday morning as observers across the globe followed developments.

The Beechcraft B200 Super King Air small turboprop plane, which is normally configured to seat about 13 passengers, flies private charter routes out of Eastern Air Services’ base in Port Macquarie.

It departed Newcastle airport at about 8.30am on Monday but did not appear to fly towards Port Macquarie, immediately entering a circling holding pattern before emergency services were alerted at about 9.30am.

Newcastle airport shares runway facilities with the neighbouring Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base at Williamtown.

A Defence spokesperson said “a civilian King Air aircraft reported in-flight technical issues to air traffic control at RAAF Base Williamtown” at about 10.40am.

“Defence and emergency services at RAAF Base Williamtown are providing support to the aircraft,” the Defence spokesperson said.

A NSW police spokesperson said authorities had responded to reports of a plane with its landing gears in a non-operational state. They said at the time it was running low on fuel.

“About 9.30am today (Monday 13 May 2024), emergency services were called to Newcastle Airport following reports of an aircraft with mechanical issues,” NSW police said in a statement.

“Officers attached Port Stephens Hunter police district are on scene. No further details are known at this stage.

While the plane was in the air, Doug Drury, a professor of aviation at Central Queensland University, said the pilot would probably be in constant contact with maintenance teams troubleshooting solutions.

“My guess would be it’s not so much burning off fuel as it is trying to figure out what the problem is and if there is anything they can do to fix it prior to having put it on the ground,” Drury said as the plane was circling.

“If you’re landing without your landing gear you’re going to do quite a bit of damage to the engines as well as the belly of the aircraft. I would imagine they would also attempt to do a grass landing if possible, but with all the rain we’ve experienced lately that might make it difficult.”

However, Drury said if there were fire crews on the ground waiting “I’d imagine they could also put in on a runway”.

“They would be in contact with a maintenance team to go through as many trials as they can, like pull this circuit breaker, pull this switch, try this, try that,” he said.